ves without scruple to hell,
that ever the devil could have made you our delight?

_Ford._ What, a hodge-pudding? a bag of flax? 145

_Mrs Page._ A puffed man?

_Page._ Old, cold, withered, and of intolerable entrails?

_Ford._ And one that is as slanderous as Satan?

_Page._ And as poor as Job?

_Ford._ And as wicked as his wife? 150

_Evans._ And given to fornications, and to taverns, and
sack, and wine, and metheglins, and to drinkings, and
swearings, and starings, pribbles and prabbles?

_Fal._ Well, I am your theme: you have the start of
me; I am dejected; I am not able to answer the Welsh 155
flannel; ignorance itself is a plummet o'er me: use me as
you will.

_Ford._ Marry, sir, we'll bring you to Windsor, to one
Master Brook, that you have cozened of money, to whom
you should have been a pander: over and above that you 160
have suffered, I think to repay that money will be a biting
affliction.

_Page._ Yet be cheerful, knight: thou shalt eat a posset
to-night at my house; where I will desire thee to laugh at
my wife, that now laughs at thee: tell her Master Slender 165
hath married her daughter.

_Mrs Page._ [_Aside_] Doctors doubt that: if Anne Page
be my daughter, she is, by this, Doctor Caius' wife.

_Enter SLENDER._

_Slen._ Whoa, ho! ho, father Page!

_Page._ Son, how now! how now, son! have you 170
dispatched?

_Slen._ Dispatched!--I'll make the best in Gloucestershire
know on't; would I were hanged, la, else!

_Page._ Of what, son?

_Slen._ I came yonder at Eton to marry Mistress Anne 175
Page, and she's a great lubberly boy. If it had not been
i' the church, I would have swinged him, or he should have
swinged me. If I did not think it had been Anne Page,
would I might never stir!--and 'tis a postmaster's boy.

_Page._ Upon my life, then, you took the wrong. 180

_Slen._ What need you tell me that? I think so, when
I took a boy for a girl. If I had been married to him, for
all he was in woman's apparel, I would not have had him.

_Page._ Why, this is your own folly. Did not I tell you
how you should know my daughter by her garments? 185

_Slen._ I went to her in white, and cried 'mum,' and she
cried 'budget,' as Anne and I had appointed; and yet it
was not Anne, but a postmaster's boy.

_Mrs Page._ Good George, be